THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

FUNKY TOWN...  principles like this prayer no one cares about anymore in Chicago -- it's all empty platitudes -- it's not red or blue that runs anything -- IT'S GREEN.   But these were the principles being a young gang-banger the led me to believe it all meant something -- in the end it doesn't, and the cemeteries are filled with brothers that died for this for nothing.

“R.I.P. MY LORD BROTHERS”
When I die lay 2 shotguns across my chest with 5 shells left cause the 6th one I used to shoot a gansta in a great battle to the death. So, tell Allah, & Almighty Lords I’ve done my best, and rest my soul in a kingdom of Black and Red. Peace & Luv
My Lord brothers.

Heading to the meeting to be a Vice Lord.

So since the only person I knew that was a Vice Lord was white, I thought that desegregation must have applied to gang life as well. The Vice Lords hadn't gotten that memo from the 1960's.

We took the VL transportation system, the bus. This was going to be awesome! Dreams of drugs, murder, and mayhem danced in my head. I would soon be able to gangster Santa-Claus. If he didn't bring me the toys I want, I'd club him with  the stocking of coal he brought me -- hold him for ransom and do a Genghis Khan on him and hit his reindeer -- how you like that, Santa Bitch?! 

But since Santa wears red and black the Vice Lord colors -- I'd spare him, 

I even worked on my best Clint Eastwood tough guy one-liners before we got to the West Side -- West Side always has the connotations of being a tough side-- toddler's weren't raised on milk of magnesia, there were raised on milk of magnum.

Sidebar your honor -- tough guy one liners never have an opportune time to be used and they come off awkward.


SEA OF CHICKS

We pulled up to the roach infested, syphilis handout, toilet of a house. Maybe it was the gang's version of Dr. Who's the Tardis -- look like vomit colored siding on the outside to keep burglars away, but when you walk in it's Liberace's house. Good camouflage...Nope - it was sewer all the way around.

Slobbering James, Mike , and I walked in -- EEEEERRRRRPPP. The piano playing stopped. The living room didn't even have a milk crate to sit down in. Empty of furniture. Carpet so nasty, taking a piss or dump on it would have been an avarice upgrade.  Yes, Mike was black, but me and Daffy Duck were the only white boys.

Little on Mike -- he was a good kid at school. I asked him to go because he was a big black guy at school. In true stereotypical fashion, even for appearance purposes only, black guys were the guys people went to for underworld fashion. So having a black guy to hang around with at school automatically upped my street cred. Yeah, it's bad, but a needed thing in a gang.

Flash forward  six months -- Mike couldn't fight. The cast to Big Bang Theory could fight better than he could. Mike was one misplaced gene away from a woman.  He would even stop to tie his shoe laces when in a brawl.  I even had a biker gang had to bail him out from leaving shoe imprints on his forehead. Fast Forward six years -- Mike would be standing outside a Vice Lord's house as he was getting sprayed with Supersoakers filled with urine for flipping to the Gangster Disciples.  If you flipped to an opposition gang, they called it pancaking. Fipping from one side-to-another.

Bottom line -- I was solely responsible from turning a good kid with great goals into a criminal doing a life sentence on the installment plan. Anyway... Mike was now soured by the gang lifestyle.


THE FRIDAY GOAL

We walked in with the crappy carpet that homeless people rolled themselves in. And what did my eyes lie themselves upon?  I had walked into a sea of girls. There was 20 female Vice Lords gossiping and sharpening their nails with machetes. So now there was three males, two white, and one Uncle Tom black guy. We had walked into Gunday bingo get together at the local buckshot church -- their only type of potluck.

Then out of the back came three big black dudes. Now we felt at homeless -- I mean felt at home. Slobberer told them he's an Insane Vice Lord.

HISTORY LESSON

For whatever politics were on the street, IVL's had three years to join up with another set. There were no longer anymore just plain IVL, nor Central Insanes -- there were now just Imperial Insane, Mafia Insane, Cicero Insane and Hamburger with Cheese Insanes. Kidding on the last one.  I wondered if this gang was going to defend themselves with purses and cat fights.

So we all stood in a circle as the opening Fatiya literature was read. They asked why I wanted to be Vice Lord and I said I was born for this shit.  YES, GOT TO USE ONE OF MY CLINT EASTWOOD LINES.  I got some nods like I said something poetic at church that netted a swoon of Amen, preach it white guy comments.

They blessed Slobbering James in from Insane to Conservative. The hat was passed around to pay up weekly dues. I put a five dollar bill in and they would have thought I put in a million. They gasped, "Who put the fin in there?" Fin was slang for a five dollar bill. Why they called it a fin? I don't know. I couldn't think of an animal that hat five fins.

NOW I Was Placed on probation.

I had 30 days to prove myself -- kill someone, and bam -- I'd be a Vice Lord. You're also the grunt on call for anything.  I'm joking about killing someone -- that was only if needed.

I was hereby knighted Sir-Break-A-Bitch -- everyone gets a nick-name -- my real name was Dr. Potty Stool.

I faithfully went to meetings. Carried the guns, drugs... and they spent my five dollar donation at a happy meal. So there was a drug deal going down. I had to carry the strap(gun). The leader of the set was Chris C.  The deal went bad -  our set leader sent me to retrieve the money owed.  The only person I could scare at my size was a, a, was a -- huh... scare someone, I just couldn't think who I'd scare back then.  But two years later -- I scared no only a lot of people in Chicago, I scared people in my own set, and the law was out to gun for me from state to federal level.

So when a beanpole like me that weighed less than a sheet of paper went to strong-arm someone back then, it was a joke. I started to hop in the car with the guy that owned my chief. And a Bruce Lee's fists of fury came at my face -- my head was rung like the bell at Notre Dame. I was trying to get my bearings. But being that I was a Ninja in the making, I backed up and starting kicking him like Fred Flinstone driving his rock mobile.

It got him out of the car -- things escalated.  He pulled out a gun and fired two shots as he was getting out of the car.  He missed. My. 22 was in my Michelin sized coat -- I just started letting the bullets fly through the coat.

What I felt like shooting my peon .22...

What I must have looked like...

Gangbangers are either really good shots or horrible shots. At that time I was a horrible shot. But when the brothers realized I had no fear, I was earnestly trying to turn this guy into Swiss cheese. He wasn't hit, but I came out of the situation looking like Charmin clean gangbanger.

I was in, so I thought -- one problem was about to come up and it dealt with a booger-picking Vice Lord that had more grease in his jerry-curl than a bucket of Colonel Sander's chicken.

AND THIS IS WHAT I'll be discussing. And why idiots like Suge Toothbrush never leave that lifestyle, Suge Knight still want to be a tough guy after making millions. The whole damn point is to make money to get out of the ghetto -- now look what the black Santa Claus is in trouble for now? Using his car as a bulldozer.  Suge is a wasted tampon idiot.